Gerald Celente on Syria

Muslims announce plans to eradicate Christianity

Members of the Muslim jihadist group Boko Haram are vowing to “eradicate Christianity” in Nigeria.

Reports coming out of Nigeria over the past several days show that the group whose name means “Western education is evil” is launching a new terror campaign aimed at killing Christians and Jews in northern Nigeria.

The Nigerian news site Bikya Masr reports that the jihadi group has declared war on all Christians living in northern Nigeria.

Human-rights group International Christian Concern’s Jonathan Racho confirms the reports and says the news is “alarming.”

“The reports indicate that members of Boko Haram recently declared a war on Christians in northern Nigeria. The group vowed to eradicate Christians from certain areas in Nigeria,” Racho said.

“The spokesman for the group (Boko Haram) say the group will launch a number of attacks targeting Christians,” Racho said. “So there are alarming developments even as we speak.”

Estimates put the casualties in Boko Haram’s campaign at more than 100 dead since Christmas.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs press service IRIN reports that in the past 48 hours, more than 100 children have fled Nigerian for Chad to escape Boko Haram’s violent rampage.

Human Rights Watch also reports that since Christmas, Boko Haram has burned more than a dozen schools.

Racho confirms the casualty figures.

“Boko Haram has already killed hundreds. Since Christmas alone, the group has martyred about 100 Christians in northern Nigeria,” Racho said.

“They think they have not met their goals for eradicating Christians,” Racho said. “They are prepared for more bloodshed.”

Racho adds that ICC is angered by the developments.

“We are very outraged. How can a country like Nigeria with all of its resources, its oil resources, security, military and all the resources. How could that kind of country fail to protect its innocents from these kinds of attacks?” Racho said.

“Boko Haram has been able to successfully attack Christians without being stopped and it’s just outrageous!” Racho said. “It’s unacceptable!”

“We are really concerned about the continued attacks against Christians in northern Nigeria,” Racho said.

Racho is calling on Christians in the United States and other countries to act.

“I urge Christians around the world to contact their governments and ask them to get Nigeria to protect its citizens,” Racho said.

WND

Greece on brink of default as bond deal falters

he Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC joined 30 European banks and institutions in declaring their acceptance of the deal - but the tally was still far short of the 95pc needed to avoid being officially declared in default.

The International Institute of Finance (IIF), the body that has negotiated with the Greek government on behalf of bondholders, put out several announcements on Wednesday, counting the proportion of the vote as it inched up. The latest statement said bondholders “amounting in aggregate to €84bn, or 40.8pc of the €206bn total eligible debt” would support the deal.

The regular updates coincided with provocative comments from Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said he had discussed with Greece’s finance minister Evangelos Venizelos whether it would be better for the country to leave the euro.

Speaking at the European University Institute in Italy, Mr Schaeuble said he had discussed the issue “very openly” with Mr Venizelos.

“Maybe you could say it was the wrong decision for Greece to join the common European currency,” Mr Schaeuble said. “Greece has failed for a long time to deliver what is needed to be in a common currency.”

Creditors have until 8pm GMT on Thursday to agree to a €206bn bond restructuring - the biggest ever attempted. A total of 95pc of bondholders must accept the deal - agreeing to take losses of about 75pc - for it to count as “voluntary”.

Analysts said the hurdle is too high and Greece will have to resort to so-called Collective Action Clauses (CACs) to push though the deal. Athens has said it will activate the CACs, which will impose the deal on all bondholders, if between 66pc and 95pc accept the terms. Credit rating agencies have warned that the coercive nature of the CACs will constitute a default.

The International Swaps & Derivatives Association (ISDA), which determines if credit default insurance should be paid, is expected to reconvene if CACs are used.

Greece’s debt management agency has warned it “does not contemplate the availability of funds” to pay investors who refuse to vote for the deal. Even so, several Greek pension funds said they would not approve the debt swap.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said she was confident of a deal. Jan Kees de Jager, the Dutch finance minister, refused to call it. Analysts said markets were expecting a default. After Tuesday’s sell-off, European markets closed mostly flat on the day.

BNP Paribas’ Jean Lemierre said a Greek default would result in poverty in Greece and would be “extremely dangerous” for the rest of the eurozone. But Simon Denham of Capital Spreads argued that traders were prepared for the “worst case scenario” and the “creditors of Greece would rather see a substantial writedown of their assets in exchange for other interest bearing bonds as opposed to losing the whole lot”, he said.

Analysts at RBS warned that Athens would need a third bail-out “similar to the current one” in order to meet its funding needs up until 2020. Even so, Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, wrote a letter to Lucas Papademos, the Greek prime minister, outlining a six point plan to “stimulate growth and competitiveness” in the shattered country.

Meanwhile, Ms Merkel privately admitted a mounting concern about Portugal’s rising borrowing costs. Sources told Reuters that the German Chancellor had told a group of officials “the risk premiums on Portuguese bonds are a worry”.

Spanish and Italian 10-year bond yields rose - to 5.1pc and 5.2pc respectively - after analysts at the IIF said a disorderly Greek default would also probably require “support to Spain and Italy to stem contagion there”. Fresh data showed German industrial orders fell unexpectedly in January.

The Telegraph

Switzerland Wants Its Gold Back From The New York Fed

Earlier today, we reported that Germans are increasingly concerned that their gold, at over 3,400 tons a majority of which is likely stored in the vault 80 feet below street level of 33 Liberty (recently purchased by the Fed with freshly printed money at far higher than prevailing commercial real estate rates for the Downtown NY area), may be in jeopardy,and will likely soon formally inquire just how much of said gold is really held by the Fed. 

As it turns out, Germany is not alone: as part of the "Rettet Unser Schweizer Gold", or the “Gold Initiative”: A Swiss Initiative to Secure the Swiss National Bank’s Gold Reserves initiative, launched recently by four members of the Swiss parliament, the Swiss people should have a right to vote on 3 simple things: 

i) keeping the Swiss gold physically in Switzerland 

ii) forbidding the SNB from selling any more of its gold reserves

iii) the SNB has to hold at least 20% of its assets in gold. 

Needless the say the implications of this vote actually succeeding are comparable to the Greeks holding a referendum on whether or not to be in the Eurozone. And everyone saw how quickly G-Pap was "eliminated" within hours of making that particular threat. Yet it begs the question: how many more international grassroots outcries for if not repatriation, then at least an audit of foreign gold held by the New York Fed have to take place, before Goldman's (and New York Fed's) Bill Dudley relents? And why are the international central banks not disclosing what their people demand, if only to confirm that the gold is present and accounted for, even if it is at the Federal Reserve?


Zero Hedge

Top US danger rating for Syrian chemical-biological missiles ahead of Iran

US military officials said on Wednesday, March 7, that contrary to the prevailing impression, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed not only their dispute over an attack on Iran at their White House meeting on March 5, but devoted considerable attention to the Syrian crisis, focusing on the hundreds of surface-to-surface missiles armed with chemical and biological warheads possessed by Syria. The peril of the Assad regime launching them now tops America’s chart of the threats looming over Israel and Turkey, those sources told DEBKAfile.

The US president accordingly prevailed upon his Israeli guest to hurry up and patch up relations with Turkey, which he was willing to assist, because it would take a combined US-Turkish-Israeli military effort to ward off an attack by Syria’s poisoned missiles. Indeed, if the Syrian conflict is not solved, America might be forced to turn its missile shield against Bashar Assad’s missiles before they are needed against an Iranian attack.

The hazard could be accelerated by three elements, say American sources:

1. Assad might decide to respond with extreme violence to foreign military intervention in Syria, even an operation confined only to drawing the civilian population into security zones safe from the attacks of his security services.

On Tuesday, March 6, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan reverted to his call for security zones, and last week, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman offered humanitarian aid to Syria’s beleaguered civilian population. Both such actions, say the American sources, might well be taken by Assad as provocations deserving of reprisal by missiles – first those carrying chemical warheads, then biological ones.

Minister of Home Front Defense Matan Vilnai said Tuesday when he dedicated 14 public shelters at the two largest Druze communities in the Carmel district, Daliat al-Carmel and Usufiya, that “the Haifa district of the Home Front command is expected to be very important in the next war and we anticipate that hundreds of missiles will be fired at the home front.”

These shelters can accommodate 3,000 people.

2. Assad might respond to an Iranian request to take part in a preemptive strike launched by Tehran or Iranian retaliation for attacks on its nuclear facilities by the US or Israel.
3. Assad might transfer the unconventional missions to Iran’s Lebanese surrogate, the Hizballah - in which case, the US, Turkey and Israel would have no option but to smash them.
US military sources say that although Israel possesses a strong air force and special forces able to sabotage Assad’s chemical and biological missiles, the United States and Turkey would have to pitch in with military resources to destroy them completely.

That arsenal is being closely watched by US surveillance drones after the lessons from the Libyan war when at least 5,000 advanced anti-aircraft missiles were spirited out of Qaddafi’s weapons stores, some of them smuggled into Gaza for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Testifying to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday, the Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey said the Assad regime had ““approximately five times more sophisticated air defenses than existed in Libya covering one-fifth of the terrain” and “about ten times more than we experienced in Serbia.” He also has chemical and biological weapons.

His words reinforced the testimony presented Tuesday to the Senate’s Armed Services Committee by two senior American generals. Marine Gen. James Mattis, head of the US Central Command which covers the Middle East and Gulf region, said: “Syria has a ‘substantial chemical and biological weapons capability and thousands of shoulder-launched missiles.”

Admiral William McRaven, head of the US Special Operations Command, also spoke to the committee about Syria’s weapons of mass destruction and American preparations to deal with this menace.
Those briefings were the first assessments of Syrian chemical and biological weapons capabilities to be given publicly by the heads of America's armed forces. This was the direct result, US sources say, of the candid and open conversation on the subject between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu Tuesday.



Debkafile

China pulls its workers from Syria

BEIJING - China is bringing workers home from Syria, its commerce minister said on Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to avoid a repeat of last year's eleventh-hour rescue of Chinese nationals from Libya when violence engulfed that country.

Only about 100 Chinese workers will be left behind to guard work camps and equipment, the minister, Chen Deming, said. He did not give figures for the total number of Chinese citizens or projects in Syria.

"The Chinese government and ministries must seriously undertake the protection of Chinese firms' production and projects overseas, and the protection of the lives of Chinese citizens overseas, especially engineering teams," Chen told reporters.

China sent an envoy to Damascus this week, even as closed-door meetings were held at the UN to discuss a US-drafted resolution urging an end to the Syrian government's increasingly lethal crackdown on a year-long revolt. China joined Russia to veto UN resolutions on Syria in October and February.

China was caught off guard last year when a civil war erupted in Libya. Nearly 36,000 of its nationals were frced to hastily leave the country. Chinese workers were involved in Libyan projects worth $17 billion, Chen said.

His remarks represent some of the most detailed comments by Beijing officials regarding Chinese interests in Libya. "The tragedy is that these projects were badly damaged during the instability, the civil war and the foreign intervention," Chen said.

"So we are negotiating with the Libyan government, we hope that the Libyan government can actually begin compensation for these projects in accordance with international norms." China was evaluating security in Libya, he said, but did not deem it safe enough for work on the projects to resume.

China's workers have been exposed to dangers when they go overseas in Sudan, Egypt, Niger and Pakistan, among other countries.

Jerusalem Post

Russia accuses Libya of training Syrian rebels

UNITED NATIONS - Russia accused Libya during a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday of running a training center for Syrian rebels and arming the fighters in their battle to overthrow the country's President Bashar Assad.

"We have received information that in Libya, with the support of the authorities, there is a special training center for the Syrian revolutionaries and people are sent to Syria to attack the legal government," Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, told the UN Security Council.

"This is completely unacceptable ... This activity is undermining stability in the Middle East," said Churkin, who also questioned whether "the export of revolution" was "turning into the export of terrorism."

In Syria, security forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians during an 11-month crackdown on pro-democracy protests, according to the United Nations, and the outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing. Russia and China have twice used vetoes to block action by the UN Security Council.

Pro-democracy protests in the region, dubbed the Arab Spring, have toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Russia, which is Syria's main arms supplier and has use of a naval base there, has also repeatedly voiced anger over NATO air strikes that helped Libyan rebels drive Muammar Gaddafi from power last year and on Wednesday Churkin demanded that NATO recognize it caused civilian casualties and pay compensation.

Rights groups have said several dozen civilians were killed by NATO air strikes in Libya.

While Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib did not respond to Churkin's accusation that Libya was training Syrian rebels, he told the UN Security Council that Libya has already investigated the deaths of all civilians during the fighting.

"I hope that the reason for raising this matter will not be to impede or prevent the international community from interfering in the situation of other states where their peoples are being massacred and killed at the hands of their rulers," Keib said.

Libya said last month that it would donate $100 million in humanitarian aid to the Syrian opposition and allow them to open an office in Tripoli.

Jerusalem Post